It is how it is
by swsluver4ever
Summary: Raelynn Grimes lives in a world owned by the undead. Her and her group try to survive in the new world, but what happens when love is thrown in to the mix? Nothing could ever have prepared Raelynn for this new world, but maybe with the help of her group, they can take back the world and start new. O/C Daryl D. P.S i do not own The Walking Dead or its characters. Only Raelynn.
1. Chapter 1

It was late in the afternoon when I got the call. My dad had been shot and killed. He was shot at his job as a police officer and sent straight to the hospital. He had been there for a couple of weeks in a coma. The weird thing was the call was not from the hospital it was from my dad's best friend Shane. He said to have our stuff packed and that he was going to come pick us up. I knew why he was coming. It was all over the news. The virus that had killed so many people. At first if you were bit or scratched you would have only so many hours to live before you turned. And when you turned you would become a flesh-eating monster that only has one thought; eat. Shane picked me, my mom Lori, and my little brother Carl up from our house. He was going to take us somewhere safe

"Where are you taking us?" my mom asked.

"Where ever I need to, to keep you three, safe." He said. I could tell in his voice that he meant it. He was going to keep us safe no matter what. We drove for what felt like forever. Many things had happened. We ended up in the mountains with many other survivors.

"Hey Raelynn!" Carl yelled to me.

"Hey buddy!" I yelled back. Carl and the other kids were doing their school work at a little table by a tree.

"After my school work, can I come hang out with you?" He asked hope in his little blue eyes.

"Sure, little dude. I got nothing to do today so I guess we can hang." I told him.

I looked up from Carl to my mom. She always had this look on her face. It was a look of sadness. I'm not surprised. She lost her husband, the world we used to know is gone, and she has, to take care of two kids on her own. Even though I'm 21 and I can help, out with carl, I feel so bad with all the work put on her shoulders. On a different note, some of our team/group went on a run today. A Korean man named Glenn, a woman named Andrea, a man named t-dog (Theodore), a woman named Jacqui, a man named Morales, and man named Merle.

They haven't gotten back from the run yet and we are hopeful they will be back soon. I think back to the time when carl was first born. That was about nine or ten years ago. He was such a cute baby. I was one of the first people to hold him. First it was dad then mom then me.

Carl runs up to me pulling me from my thoughts. "Hey! Can we go play now?" he asks me with a cheery voice.

"Sure, little dude!" I say and we walk away together.

…

A couple hours later we hear a car coming up the mountain. The dang thing is going off possibly drawing a bunch of walker's attention.

It gets up the mountain and Glenn gets out of it.

"Holy crap, turn that damn thing off!" Dale yells. Dale is a very nice old man who I go to talk to a lot.

Glenn throws his hands up in the air and yells "I don't know how?" back to Dale

Amy starts yelling at him asking him a million questions about her sister Andrea. He pops the hood and Jim pulls something out turning off the car. "Yes! She's fine. Every one's fine!" he yells at us. "Well, Merle…not so much." He says. Oh, crap Daryl is going to be so mad.

"You crazy driving this wailing bastard up here, you trying to draw every walker for miles?" Shane asks Glenn.

"I think we're okay." Dale tells Shane, as he looks around.

"You call being stupid okay?" Shane looks to Dale as he leans on the car.

"Well the alarm was echoing all over these hills, hard to pin point the source." Dale says. I agree. Maybe it was a bad idea driving this thing up here with it going off like that, but Dale is right.

"I'm not arguing, I'm just saying!" Dale continues. "It wouldn't hurt to think things through a little more carefully next time, would it?" he says to Glenn. Glenn immediately has an embarrassed look on his face.

"Sorry…." He says as he turns to the car. "Got a cool car…"

He had to point that out, seriously?

Suddenly a truck pulls up. Just then Andrea jumps out of the back.

"Amy?" she says. "Andrea!" Amy cries, and they both run to each other and hug.

Then Jacqui gets out of the back walking up to the rest of the group. Then Morales gets out of the passenger seat and runs to his kids. All this brings tears to my eyes. Then t-dog gets out of the back.

I look over to see mom and Carl walking a bit away from the group. I on the other hand stay where I am and watch everyone be reunited with their family's. I look beside me to see mom bent down to Carl's level telling him every things ok. He's crying which makes me cry. God, I hate it when he cries.

Dale says something but I'm kind of zoned out and don't pay attention. Then I hear Glenn say something about a new guy and my attention was soon regained.

"Yeah. Crazy Vato just got into town. Hey helicopter boy! Come say hello." Morales says.

Suddenly someone in a police uniform gets out of the truck. It takes a second for me to fully realize who it is but once Morales say's "the guys a cop, just like you." To Shane I realize who it is.

It's my dad.

Carl looks over and sees him, and I see him, and my mom sees him and we are all staring at each other for a second. Then Carl starts running to him, and I start running over to him. We fall to the ground in a hug. Then mom gets to us and we are all hugging. I can't believe it. We found each other. We are a family again. For once I feel happy!

 _Authors note_

 _I hope you all liked it! I'm not the best writer because I'm kind of new to it and all and I'm a bit young but I tried my best. Make sure to leave a review because I would love to hear from you all. Thanks for reading!_


	2. Chapter 2

"Disoriented. I guess that comes closest." My dad says as we are all around the fire sitting close to our loved ones.

"Disoriented. Fear, confusion, all those things, but disoriented comes closest." We all sit in silence after he says that until Dale speaks.

"Words can be meager things." He says. He puts his can down and then continues. "Sometimes they fall short."

"I felt like I had been ripped out of my life. Put somewhere else." Dad starts again. "For a while I thought I was trapped in some coma dream, something I might not wake up from, ever"

Suddenly Carl looked up to my dad and said "mom said you died."

"She had every reason to believe that." He said. "Don't you ever doubt it."

In that moment mom looked up to Shane. And Shane looked back at her.

"when things started to get really, bad, they told me at the hospital that they were gonna medevac you and the other patients to Atlanta, and it never happened." Mom said to dad.

"Well I'm not surprised after Atlanta fell." Dad started. "And from the look of that hospital, it got over run."

"Yeah looks don't deceive. I barely got them out. You know?" Shane said. He wasn't wrong. It was complete chaos everywhere on the way out. We were lucky to have Shane that day.

"I can't tell you how grateful I am to you, Shane. I can't begin to express it." Dad says. It's still weird to hear his voice again after being told he was dead.

"There go those words falling short again. Paltry things." Dale said with a smile. Dale has always been so sweet. He was like a father before my dad got back, always there when needed a shoulder to cry on.

 _All, of a sudden, Ed throws a piece of wood into the fire that him and his family were at. I don't get why they have a separate fire from ours, but then again, Ed is the biggest jerk I have ever met. It's obvious he beats his wife._

 _"_ _Hey Ed, wanna rethink that log?" Shane asks as everyone looks over to the Peletier family._

 _"_ _It's cold, man." He says._ _Yeah no duh_ _I thought to myself,_ _but do you think we are making our camp fire so big you can see it from miles away? Nope!_

 _"_ _Cold don't change the rules, does it?" Shane asks him. "Keep our fires low, just embers so we can't be seen from a distance, right?"_

 _"_ _I said its cold. You should mind your business for once." Ed says. God, I want to push him off this dang mountain but I keep my cool._

 _Shane starts to get up from the spot he was sitting at and walks over to Ed. "Hey Ed, are you sure you want to have this conversation man?" Shane asks him. Ed looks up to Carol, his wife and says "Go on, pull the damn thing out. Go on!" she gets up and pulls the log out of the fire and Shane stomps on the fire a bit to make it smaller, then starts talking to Carol and her daughter Sophia._

 _"_ _Hey Carol, Sophia, how are y'all this evening?" he asks them._

 _Carol is quick to respond "Fine, we're just fine." She says to Shane._

 _"_ _Okay." Shane says back to her, even though we all know they are not fine._

 _"_ _Sorry about the fire." Carol says._

 _"_ _No, no, no, no apology needed." He says to her. "Y'all have a good night, kay?" he says as he starts to get up and walk away._

 _"_ _Thank you." Carol says almost in a whisper. She needs to get away from that mean husband of hers. I don't know why she is still with him. I can't believe her daughter has to deal with a terrible father like him._

 _"_ _I appreciate the cooperation." He says to Ed as he walks away from the Peletier family._

 _Right when Shane sits down Dale starts to speak up. "Have you given any thought to Daryl Dixon?" he says. "He won't be happy to hear his brother was left behind."_

 _"_ _I'll tell him." T-dog says. "I dropped the key it's on me."_

 _Then my dad starts to talk. "I cuffed him. That makes him mine" he says._

 _"_ _guys It's not a competition. I don't mean to bring race into this but, it might sound better coming from a white guy." Glenn says._

 _"_ _I did what I did. Hell, if I'm gonna hide from him." T-dog says_

 _"_ _we could lie?" Amy says, but it sounds more like a question. Then Andrea says "Or tell the truth. Merle was out of control. Something had to be done or he would have gotten us killed." Then Andrea looked to my mom and continued. "Your husband did what was necessary. And if Merle got left behind it is nobodys fault but Merles."_

 _"_ _and that's what we tell Daryl?" Dale asks. "I don't see a rational discussion to be had from that, do you? Word to the wise, we're gonna have our hands full when he gets back from his hunt."_

 _"_ _I was scared and I ran." Says t-dog "I'm not ashamed of it."_

 _"_ _We were all scared, we all ran. What's your point?" Andrea asks t-dog._

 _"_ _I stopped long enough to chain that door. The stair case is narrow, maybe half a dozen geeks can squeeze against it at any one time. That's not enough to break through that. Not that chain. Not that padlock. My point. Dixons alive. And he's still up there handcuffed on that roof. That's on us." T-dog said getting up from where he was sitting._

 _So, Dixon could be alive. Maybe Daryl won't be as mad as I thought he would be._

 _After that it was a quiet night. A lot of us went to bed and I was one of the last ones up. Before I went to bed I said goodnight to my parents, and went to the bathroom in the RV. I went into my tent where little carl was sleeping and changed into my pajamas and went to bed._

 _That night I had many dreams and nightmares. I woke up at one point, got out of the tent, went to the bathroom, got a sip of water, and went back to bed._

Authors note

I hope you all enjoyed the second chapter! I was so happy to finally finish it and get it up Make sure to review because I would love to hear what you all have to say about the story! 


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